Traditional bandwidth management systems require the installation of physical network element, called Policy Enforcement Point (PEP), in the traffic path. A PEP is a network device, often implemented in a network router, which is capable of locally shaping traffic (enforcing traffic policies/rules) as instructed by a Policy Decision Point (PDP). The installation of multiple PEPs in a large and complex network, such as a wireless communications network with several thousand links and network elements, is a costly and complex task.